SBIG ST-8XE CCD CAMERA help

Hi Jim,
Nice to hear an old piece of hardware is still being used. That said, if you're considering a new CCD, now is the time to do it, as ON Semiconductor (maker of the former Kodak/Truesense CCD sensors) is exiting the CCD business and just doing CMOS as of March 2020. Teledyne e2v and Sony CCD sensors continue to be available into the future.

1. The KAF-1602E chip has no anti-blooming gates; the sensor is ideal for photometry because of this. The old ST-7XE, ST-8XE, and the ST10 all used non-ABG sensors, ideal for photometry, as the pixel stays linear up to the point where it is full and the electrons spill over into the neighbouring pixels, aka blooming.

Your option is to decrease the exposure time, telescope aperture, or to combine images shot at multiple exposure lengths. The electron well depth of the KAF-1602 is about 50,000 in normal operation, so you want to limit the exposures to have a high ADU somewhere around 45,000 or so.

2. Setting up the guide chip is dependent on the software you are using. Is this MaxIm you are using or something else?
If MaxIm, select SBIG Universal for the Camera 1, and Dual Chip, so that Camera 2 will automatically be set to the internal guide sensor.
You may have to do some adjustments to the Advanced settings for Camera 1.

Take a look at the archived version of the manual:
http://diffractionlimited.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/USBmanRev14.pdf
Have fun!

 

All the manuals and drivers are here for these old cameras:
http://diffractionlimited.com/support/sbig-archives/

"Speed" is only used when there is a Digital SLR camera attached to set it's ISO speed, a measure of sensitivity.
The box that says "Seconds" determines the exposure time - it is the only setting that controls the shutter speed.

BTW Use Help... Check for Updates to see if there is a newer version of MaxIm available to you. I don't think that has anything to do with your issue, however we're at 6.20, and 6.21 is coming out soon. A lot of improvements have happened over the last few years.

On the Camera Control Window, Guide tab, is a Settings button that you use to pick the appropriate mount control.
Click that button, and then you will get a Guide Settings dialog.
Autoguider Output is the setting you want to change - make sure it is set to Main Relays, as you are using the guider port on the camera to talk to the ST-4 port on your mount.

It might be worth doing some bedtime reading of the manual.

You don't need an AO unit to guide.
The SBIG AO Control panel will come up if you have selected SBIG w/AO instead of SBIG Universal as your driver in MaxIm for the main camera. You want SBIG Universal if you don't have an SBIG AO-7 or AO-8 unit.

Canopus is the second brightest star at -0.62 mv ! Only Sirius and the Sun are brighter. Not a good choice.
Of the billions of stars out there, this is nearly the worst you could have picked as a test for the camera.
It might be good for aiming, such as aligning your camera and finder scope, but certainly not for focusing or as a good target star.
Try something less than visual magnitude mv=6. eg your eye can just see it. Better yet, go for something fainter like mv=10, as the camera is on a light bucket, not a small refractor.
Have fun!